


Last Call

by Deifire



Series: Eerie Advent Calendar Challenge [2]
Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Alternate Universe, Apocalypse, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 13:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5335754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Somewhere outside, the world is burning. </em>
</p><p>Alternate alternate universe. Canon-divergent from "Reality Takes a Holiday."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Call

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Eerie Advent Calendar fic challenge.
> 
> Prompt: fated.

_Ten Years Later_  
_Another Reality_  
_Los Angeles, California_

Somewhere outside, the world is burning. 

Darkness has already engulfed the Pacific Northwest and is moving slowly south, but between the flames and the way the ground below them trembles, the people of Los Angeles aren’t sure there’s going to be a city left for it to devour when it gets here.

Dash X has a ritual circle carved into the stone floor of his basement, an obsidian mirror, an old book, and the standard list of ingredients: four red candles, a vial of tears cried only in dreams, a jar of something he’s been assured from a seller on eBay contains ashes from the genuine Phoenix, a key, some incense, an ordinary kitchen knife, and one last hope.

***

It’s been ten years since Dash X managed to turn his role as the lead on television’s _Eerie, Indiana_ into a successful movie career.

If you’d asked him in all that time if fame and fortune had made him happy, he probably would have laughed at you, smiled, and said, of course.

He certainly wouldn’t have had any reason to admit that in the intervening years, he’s learned and tried sixteen ways to reverse time, approximately forty-seven different rituals for to talking to or raising the dead, and twelve separate methods, both occult and technological, for communicating across realities and planes of existence.

He’s tried all of them more times than he cares to count.

None of them work.

***

The thirteenth method for calling across reality—the ritual he’d found in the grimoire he’d bought in that old bookshop when they were shooting that action movie on location in London—did something.

Two hours after he’d finished it, there was a knock at his door upstairs.

He’d opened it to find Simon Holmes standing there. 

Dash knew it was Simon and not Justin almost immediately. In part, because of the way his current visitor was not on the phone to his agent, or his dealer, or his therapist. But also because of the way Simon, who otherwise looked like he’d literally been through hell to get to Dash’s doorstep, smiled at him and said, “Dash! I found you!”

Nobody outside of a television set had smiled at Dash like that in forever.

It was a short-lived moment, because the fierce hug Simon gave him was followed immediately by the question, “Where’s Marshall?”

Dash invited him in, poured them both a drink, and eventually confessed everything. About a certain script, an alternate reality, and a decision he’d made ten years ago for a chance at fame and fortune. 

A decision that he’d come to regret, as he’d done with most of the poor and selfish decisions he’d made in life, but this time only when it was too late to take it back.

As he finished, he was aware Simon Holmes was never going to smile at him again.

“I only knew the two of you disappeared one day,” said Simon, quietly. “After that, things went from bad to worse. The forces of weirdness were taking over. We tried to fight it, those of us that were left, but then Mr. Radford found that journal.”

“What journal?” Dash asked.

“A journal with a prophecy, or I don’t know, a vision, or maybe just an eye-witness record of the future that somehow found its way back across time and into the old archives of the Loyal Order of Corn. If the timeline in Eerie had continued on its normal course, the forces of weirdness would have risen, and three people would have stopped them. You, me, and Marshall. But you two weren’t there.”

Dash had no idea what to say.

“It was Janet who had the idea to go looking for you in other times, other realities. The weirdness was breaking through to other dimensions, so we thought, why couldn’t we? But it was harder than it looked, and the multiverse is a big place. We’d given up when the oracles we’d set up in the World O’ Stuff sensed you calling us. I came here expecting to find both of you. Maybe trapped somehow. I never expected…”

“I’m sorry,” Dash said, though he knew it was entirely less than adequate.

“You were supposed to help save us. You were supposed to be one of the most important people in all of time and space. That’s what you were created for, it turns out. Instead, you changed your fate. Now, you’re just this.”

“How do I change it back?” Dash asked. He had more questions, but that seemed to be the most important one.

Simon shook his head. “I don’t know. Marshall would, I think. In the reality that was supposed to happen, Marshall would have been good at these things. I’m going to keep hoping that what you did didn’t erase him from all of existence. That maybe there’s a version of him still out there somewhere, in some time, in some dimension, that whatever you did didn’t manage to destroy. I’m going to keep looking. In the meantime, the forces of weirdness are coming here. You’d better get prepared.”

“Maybe we could work together. Maybe we could—" Dash began, but Simon just looked at him.

“You killed my best friend,” he said.

And that was all there was to say.

***

Three days later, Indiana exploded. The smoking crater was miles wide, and the resulting debris temporarily blocked out the sun. To the south and west, the Missouri National Guard found itself battling a giant serpent, while to the north and east, the human population fled, in most cases too slowly, from a many-tentacled eldritch abomination eating everything in its path as it made its way toward the coast.

Things only got worse from there.

***

It’s taken Dash a few days and most of the money he has to get the tools required to try another calling. The northwest is gone, the east has been overrun by monsters, and what happened to Florida doesn’t bear thinking about.

What news they get from the rest of the world is spotty and unreliable at best, but the reports coming in that mention dragons, mutant insects, UFOs, frost giants, and at least one plague of fire-breathing kittens has Dash convinced that the weirdness is no longer remotely localized.

By now, things are unraveling fast.

He clings to the hope that somewhere out there in the vast multiverse, there is a version of Marshall Teller who still exists and who will know what to do to stop this. And that somehow, that Marshall Teller can be reached.

As Dash assembles his ingredients, the Mississippi River turns to blood. Texas freezes over. Lights of no natural color appear in the sky over the remains of the southwest, and those who look up at them are simultaneously struck blind and mad.

As he lights the candles, the entirety of Canada briefly blinks out of existence, and when it reappears, it’s a barren, scorched hellscape, save for every single Tim Hortons, all of which remain inexplicably intact.

As Dash makes the cut in his arm, begins to say the ritual words, and allows his own blood to mingle with the tears and ash, the dead rise forth from graves all over the world to consume the living. 

Somewhere between that and a giant wolf appearing to devour the sun, as Dash pours the mixture over the key, the order is given for humanity’s final, desperate counterstrike.

All over this world, people scream, and cry, and pray.

But in a basement in Los Angeles, there is only silence, as one last call goes out into the void, and is met with no reply.


End file.
